I distinctly remember where I heard Radiohead’s Kid A for the first time. It was on a road trip, driving with my parents and siblings to Yellowstone National Park. The mostly desolate and flat landscape surrounding most of our seemingly interminable drive from Colorado and through some of the most…

Welcome to our first installment of Kvlt Kolvmn in the Year of Our Dark Lord 2018! We’ve missed you. Let’s talk about black metal. 2017 was not a watershed year for the subgenre like it was for death metal. While there were a number of quality releases throughout the year…

I will never claim to be a black metal expert. I’ve heard the originators of the genre, some of the bigger albums, and I know what bands I like. I know I like atmospheric black, and Bloodbark really nails it. The 3 track, 40 minute album Bonebranches gives that aggressive…

It’s hard to say much about Arson that hasn’t already been said before, by myself. That’s not to say I spend a lot of time talking about Austrian black metal outfit Harakiri For The Sky, so much as it is a comment on the fact that nothing about them has changed between July 22nd,…

Of the comments on our post outlining Music Journalism’s Top 25 Metal Albums of 2017, one in particular provided an opinion that’s plagued the metal community for quite some time. The commenter criticized Heavy Blog for being too focused on “wanting to like what’s different as oppose to just listening to an…

Experimental black metal in this latter portion of the 2010s brings to mind a particular sound and aesthetic. I’m here referring to the angular, jagged riff building of bands like Thantifaxath, Dodecahedron, and Deathspell Omega, who use versions of anti-melody and severe technicality to create a swirling maelstrom of sound…

Welp. You’ve seen it. You’ve debated it. You’ve cried over it. But what’s done is done: Our list of the best albums of the year is behind us, and there is much rejoicing. But what about the albums we loved that didn’t make the cut? For those of you who…

It’s pretty incredible to reflect on how much Kvlt Kolvmn has grown over the last couple years, especially when it comes to how consequential it’s been for Heavy Blog’s coverage of the vast web of metal subgenres. What began as an outlet for me (Scott) to occasionally ramble about my…

I’ve always been someone with a soft spot for symphonic black metal, ever since first discovering Emperor and their classic album In the Nightside Eclipse, and have had an on-again, off-again infatuation with the genre and it’s eccentricities ever since. One of my biggest complaints about the genre, however, was that…

November. The end of the year is upon us. What a fucking mess. Politically, socially, ethically, take your pick. It’s all bad, bad, and bad. In 2017, the world found itself repeatedly at moral and ethical crossroads, and opted almost exclusively for the most ridiculous and asinine path possible. Honestly,…